Players Whine After Testing Rollback Prototypes
The PGA Tour seems opposed to 2028's ball testing changes. Predictably, the softest generation wants to "take a stand" over losing a few yards.
In another embarrassing effort to keep the freebies coming, the PGA Tour enlisted players to give feedback on “rolled back” prototype golf balls.
This rigorous scientific effort was conducted—because, of course, it was—on St. Simon’s Island and yielded a shocking conclusion from the players interviewed by Golfweek’s Adam Schupak, who broke the story: PGA Tour players don’t like hitting it a little bit shorter and this will not grow the game.
The softest, greediest, and most entitled collection of professional golfers to ever play the game is upset that they’ll lose 15-or-so yards off of drives averaging 300+ yards. They are playing for more money than ever before, despite dwindling television audiences compared to just a few years ago. You’d think they’d have far greater concerns or might even welcome tweaks that could reduce the doldrums of drive-and-flip-wedge golf.
The PGA Tour under Jay Monahan’s “stewardship” already got the final rollback watered down and suggested the (PGA Tour) ShotLink data was flawed. The Tour whined about proposed driver testing rules despite many of its own players suggesting that center-face strikes should be better rewarded.
Also worth repeating for the 1049th time: the USGA/R&A’s Rules of Golf are entirely optional. They are used free of charge by the PGA Tour. And there is no rule, law, creed, or other restriction preventing the PGA Tour from creating a set of rules featuring free drops, no time restrictions for hitting shots, 24/7 “preferred lies,” and veiled equipment standards.
Oh wait, that’s what we have now.
And they’re still miserable!
Those who genuinely play for love of the game would vow to play with sticks and stones if it meant getting to play for $20 million over immaculately groomed courses as compression boots, physios, and holistically-blessed food await post-round!
As always, I recommend reading the full story for context. But here at The Quad, we’ll just laugh at the softness, inconsistency, and relentless devotion to growing the game.
Brian Harman:
“I think it’s a bad idea. I can’t get on board,” he told Golfweek at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. “There are so many more steps we can take to mitigate distance with golf course setup, driver set up before you force companies to R&D a bunch of things.”
Mitigate distance through setup? That’s always gone over so well when it happens. Also, wouldn’t this also contradict the whole “distance puts people in the seats” thinking?
Driver setup? Note to Brian: the two PGA’s already howled at the prospect of different competition rules for the big stick to protect that vital bond of selling average hacks an $800 driver. So that’s a nuanced conversation between your organization and the driver-makers.
R&D? Since you just tested a prototype in December, it seems like they’re pretty far along on a change we were warned would cost billions in R&D that doesn’t even happen until 2028. But please, go on.
“Asked why he participated in the testing, Harman said, “Out of a general care for the future of the game. I’ve been through a lot of this stuff in my career. It was the grooves and then it was the putter and now it’s the ball. Sometimes things are just good. Just because a guy that looks like (Houston Astros infielder) Jose Altuve is able to hit home runs doesn’t mean you make the ballparks bigger.”
Eh em…you know they play wood bats in MLB so they don’t have to expand the parks? I don’t know about the whole Altuve analogy other than he is vertically challenged and sure didn’t want his jersey ripped off.